2012 Ag Year In Review Part 2

2012 Ag Year In Review Part 2. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

We talked about a lot of things in 2012 relating to the ag industry. In March I had the opportunity to get a little philosophical with author James P. Owen, author of the book, “Cowboy Ethics - What Wall Street Can Learn from the Code of the West.”

OWEN: I don’t look at these 10 principals as the end all, be all. I would say in my opinion these principals are timeless and universal and they apply to each of us no matter who we are, what our backgrounds are but they’re not the end all. My hope is that if you are going to look at these, read the book and read the principals and inspire some to think for themselves, what do I stand for.

Trade was a big issue in 2012 and USDA Under Secretary, Michael Scuse headed to China for a trade visit.

SCUSE: This is going to be the largest trade mission to date. We have about 40 U.S. companies going, representatives from 6 state department of agriculture going over. We’re going to be doing a lot of one-on-one meetings between our businesses and business contacts, agents, distributors, importers in China to help move additional U.S. products into the Chinese market - one that is just growing by leaps and bounds each and every year.

Jeff Passel, Senior Demographer with the Pew Hispanic Center announced a major change in immigration.

PASSEL: The trend of Mexicans moving into the United States has clearly been going down and throughout this 5-year period it dropped substantially. The trend of the flow of people going back to Mexico seems to be going up during this period. Because the two balance out when you put together a decreasing flow to the U.S. and an increasing flow to Mexico, by the end of the 2005 to 2010 period we reached a situation where there were almost certainly more people going to Mexico than coming to the United States.

There was a lot of emphasis on young farmers and ranchers this year. Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack came up with a plan to help make college more affordable.

VILSACK: Increasing the number of Pell grants as well as increasing the overall award of a Pell grant to make it just a bit easier for young people to afford college or community college education. Increase Pell grant awards by the consumer price index so that they will always keep pace with inflation.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.